Half a year later, the two elder daughters moved out of Fourth Wife You’s home and into those of their respective husbands. Eldest Daughter’s husband was a cripple who walked with a cane and had to lean on his bed when he wanted to go to sleep. Second Daughter’s husband, meanwhile, had a bad eye, which was always covered with a yellowish film as though it hadn’t been washed properly. Before the marriage, both men asked Fourth Wife You if her daughters were really cured, and she said, ‘Yes, and if you don’t believe me, go ask around the village.’ They did so, and the villagers all said they hadn’t heard that Fourth Wife You’s children were sick, and even if they had been sick when they were younger, they were better now.
The cripple married Eldest Daughter in the latter half of that year. It was snowing hard on the day of the wedding, and after their marriage, their lives were dark and cold. By contrast, the one-eyed man married Second Daughter at the start of spring in the following year. The sun was shining brightly on the day of the wedding, and the wind was blowing down from the mountain ridge like a sheet of silk. Their lives, however, stumbled along. On the first night of her marriage, Second Daughter had an episode and began foaming at the mouth. At the time, One-Eye happened to be in bed with her, and afterwards each time they tried to sleep together her illness would act up, and she constantly had to take medication. The summer after Second Daughter was married off, Fourth Wife You went to visit her son-in-law’s home. Her village was located thirty-nine li from that of her son-in-law, but before she had gone ten li she heard her daughter crying after having to take her medicine. When she arrived at their house, she found a pile of empty medicine bottles so high it reached the window ledge.
She asked One-Eye, ‘If she gets sick every time you try to sleep with her, couldn’t you simply not sleep with her?’
One-Eye replied, ‘I didn’t get married until I was already thirty-seven, and if I can’t sleep with my wife, then why did I get married at all? If I can’t sleep with my wife, how will my family name live on?’
After that, Fourth Wife You never returned to the home of her second son-in-law, and she rarely visited that of her first son-in-law either. As a result, she didn’t know whether or not her daughters’ illnesses were still acting up, nor whether Second Daughter ever ended up getting pregnant. Originally, Fourth Wife You had planned to visit her two daughters after the autumn harvest, but then the problem of her Third Daughter’s marriage presented itself.
The mountain ridge was vast and endless. The wind brought in surge after surge of the smell of freshly-turned earth. Sometimes, Fourth Wife You would pass people going to the market beyond the Balou Mountains. Both of Fourth Wife You’s elder daughters had married into families who lived beyond the mountains. Outsiders were normally not willing to marry women from the mountains, feeling that a visit to the in-laws would be too much work. Never mind the Yous, whose idiot children could only look to the deep hills for mates. Fourth Wife You walked quickly as the sun’s shadows fluttered around her like black veils. Li Village, Liu Gully, and both Large and Small Scholar Town were now all behind her, like discarded sheets of paper strewn across the sunlit hills. She proceeded alone, accompanied by the sound of countless sparrows and grasshoppers. In the afternoon, after the sun had passed its highest point, she heard footsteps slowly approaching, like an old person clapping. The sound faded into the distance, and she lifted her head to see if she could figure out exactly what the footsteps sounded like, whereupon she discovered that her husband, Stone You, was following her. She asked, ‘Where are you going?’
He replied, ‘If you keep going west to Wu Ravine, you’ll find five brothers who are all bachelors, any one of whom would make a match for Third Daughter.’
Fourth Wife You stopped and looked at her husband sceptically. She noticed that a mosquito had landed on his left cheek, so she swatted it away and proceeded forward. When she reached an intersection, she stood there looking uncertain, and her husband said, ‘You should take the road heading west.’ So, she took the road heading west, and soon saw Wu Ravine Village up in front of her. The village was not very large, only a hundred or so residents. In front of the village there were several villagers busy harvesting the corn and planting wheat. Because she was so dressed up and walking so quickly, the villagers all stopped what they were doing and stared at her. One of her sisters recognised her from a distance. The woman’s family was large, with children and grandchildren, and all three generations were out in the fields planting wheat. They held their hands up to their foreheads to block out the glare of the sun as they looked at her. Suddenly, the woman pulling one of the plough’s side ropes suddenly threw the rope down.
The woman’s son-in-law asked, ‘Ma, what are you doing?’
The woman replied, ‘That’s one of my sisters from when I still lived with my mother.’
Stone You pulled Fourth Wife You over to the entrance of the village and told her to wait there for a moment.
When the woman came over, she shouted, ‘Hey, are you my younger sister?’
Fourth Wife You called out in surprise, ‘Sis… it’s you!’
The woman said, ‘This is such a busy time of year. How is it that you’ve come all the way over here?’
Fourth Wife You said, ‘I’ve come to find a husband for Third Daughter. I hear that in your village there is a family with five sons, none of whom has a wife.’
They stood there on the side of the road, staring at each other. After a while, their eyes filled with tears. As girls, they had gone together into the fields to fetch water and take the cattle out to graze, but after they each married they rarely had a chance to see each other. The other woman was only about half a year older than Fourth Wife You, but looked as though she were more than a decade older, and had endured hardships that Fourth Wife You could only imagine. The other woman had only just turned sixty, and was already walking unsteadily and had a face full of wrinkles. Fourth Wife You watched her, and said, ‘Sis, you’re old, and have gone completely grey.’ The other woman replied, ‘You’ve also aged. I heard that before you even turned thirty, you were widowed with four children. I always said that I wanted to go visit you and your children, but could never seem to find the time.’ Fourth Wife You asked, ‘How are your grandchildren doing? I hear you replaced your house with a tile-roofed one. I couldn’t leave my children alone, or else I’d have come to help cook for you while you were building your new house.’
The woman looked at her in surprise, and asked, ‘Then who’s looking after Third Daughter and Fourth Idiot now, while you’re here?’
Fourth Wife You replied, ‘I locked Fourth Idiot in his room.’
The two sisters chatted there at the head of the field, until the tractor came rumbling over and the old man in the cabin urged them to return home. Only then did it occur to them that they should start heading back.
When they entered the village, Fourth Wife You saw that her sister did indeed have a new tile-roofed house with a courtyard – a house so new that the smell of sulfur from the bricks still lingered. The path through the courtyard and the ailanthus tree in the centre of the courtyard were still enveloped in waves of dust from the new tiles. Under the tree, Fourth Wife You complimented her sister on how big and bright the new building was, how straight its girders were, how good its wood was, and how much she envied her sister’s good life. Eventually, she broached the topic that had brought her there, revealing countless shameful details about Third Daughter and Fourth Idiot. The other woman lit a fire, rinsed some vegetables, kneaded some dough, and boiled some water. Then she went to a house in the back of the village and, in the blink of an eye, had summoned the eldest of their five sons. He was almost forty years old, and was thin and hunchbacked. When he heard that there was someone who wanted to marry her daughter to one of the brothers, he entered the room smiling brightly. He brought a pile of fresh dates, and invited Fourth Wife You to sit under the ailanthus tree and eat the dates as they chatted about the crops, the harvest, the drought, the house, and countless other topics.